Csound is the most powerful computer music language in the world, with a direct lineage to Max Mathews’ original Music-N languages. The focus of this class will be a synthesis of three topics: The Csound language, synthesizer theory, and composing weird alien music.

Together, we will demystify the assembly-like syntax of the Csound language. We will cover the fundamentals of synthesizer theory, including: oscillators, filters, envelopes, amplifiers and modulation. Finally, we’ll tie it all together by composing sounds in the vein of classic Sci-Fi movies.

“According to wikipedia, convolution is ‘a mathematical operator which takes two functions f and g and produces a third function that in a sense represents the amount of overlap between f and a reversed and translated version of g.’ However, this explanation tells us little about convolution as applied to audio…”

I’ve recently taken a detour from the alien world of circuit-bending into the greater cosmos of electronics. And what better thing is there to do with my new found hobby than to build modules for my Doepfer Modular? If you answered “why nothing,” you deserve a cookie.

Inside the box

Above you’ll see the result of my entire Saturday, the Shinola Low-Pass. It is a simple, passive knob-controllable low-pass filter. Its constructed from an old GBA-SP box, two capacitors, wire, two 3.5mm jacks and a 50k potentiometer.

It works okay, I guess. I intentionally crowded the jacks and pot into the corner, giving me room to expand it’s functionality later. The cutoff only goes so low, which could have been fixed with higher capacitance capacitors. Still, not bad for a first try. Despite being mostly useless, I’m quite proud of it.